Saturday night live short

Saw Natalie Portman's latest movie V for Vendetta, and it was entertaining. But not as entertaining as this digital short.

The Prez' spending woes?

From Brothers Judd comes this gem, which puts the President's spending into perspective.

The Money:

At any rate, given that Ms Noonan believes, for some reason, that Ronald Reagan was a conservative and George W. Bush isn't, it's perhaps helpful to just compare the two: when Ronald Reagan left office in 1988 he was dunning us 18.1% of GDP to pay for a federal government that spent 21.2% of GDP. In 2004, the last year for which I could find numbers, George W. Bush had lowered our tax burden to 16.3% of GDP-- a level last reached in 1959--to pay for a government that spent 19.8 of GDP.

Hat-tip Instapundit.

The inequality of income

Fromm CNNMoney comes this gem, a tender poke at the current leveling of income inequality.

The Money:

(The study) "shows modest but clear signs of incomes converging rather than diverging. Between 2001 and 2004 (the most recent year for which data are available), incomes of the poorest 20 percent of families increased while incomes of the richest 20 percent fell. Basically, the poorest families' share of total incomes grew, and the richest families' share shrank. Incomes became just a little less

unequal.

What could that trend reversal mean? The most obvious explanation seems highly counterintuitive: The skill premium, the extra value of higher education, must have declined after three decades of growing. The Fed researchers didn't pursue that line of thought, but economists Lawrence Mishel and Jared Bernstein at the Economic Policy Institute did, and they found supporting evidence in the new Economic Report of the President, issued within days of the new Fed survey. It cited Census Bureau data showing that the premium had indeed fallen sharply between 2000 and 2004. The real annual earnings of college graduates actually declined 5.2 percent, while those of high school graduates, strangely enough, rose 1.6 percent.

So if I'm reading behind (or between) the lines here I could make a strong assumption/hypothesis that the free market and our globalized economy did more to "converge" the income gap in a couple of years than all the social and educational programs combined in the last 30 years? That's fascinating, I can't wait for Krugmann to throw this idea out there in his NY Times column tomorrow!!

MSM addictions

I think Mainstream media is addicted to talking about how bad Bush is polling.

I'm not kidding, I think I see one article every week on how "baaaaad" he's doing. It's like some blue-state journo loves throwing it in our faces, sneering at us, "look, you elected him, now everyone hates him! Thanks for nothing, republi-can't!!"

And MSM wonders why they lose circulation/viewers...No they don't. It's not that they're not as relevant, the reason is we're dumber, see? We just don't have the mental capacity we did back when uncle Walter fed us defeatism from Indochine.

You can check out Belmont Club any time you like

Wretchard has a really good post on the idea of changing the perception of what is happening in Iraq in his post "You can check out any time you like".

There is too much goodness to quote from, so I'm not going to bother. I would recommend checking out pretty much everything he has posted in the last 48 hours. You know you want to.

Some great Sunday TV

Since I haven't had cable for a couple of years, I've had "find the jewels in the wasteland", so to speak. This includes a brief hour of Frontline on PBS on Tuesdays, a solid hour of Cops on Saturdays, and Sunday nights dedicated to Family Guy and what has probably become my new favorite show, Free Ride (also on Fox).

HBO? That sh*&'s for the birds!

Hometown tradition

In my hometown of Bergen in Norway, there are youth-organizations called "buekorps", or literally translated, "bow corps". The have a semi-militaristic bent, with heavy emphasis on marching with mock-rifles and playing snare-drums. I grew up about 20 minutes outside of town (which in Norway might as well be another country), so it wasn't really something that was part of our "local" upbringing. We were into soccer and sports, plus we had some prime nature in our literal backyard.

Carnival of the Capitalists

Check out the carnival for some cool posts on everything from investment returns to the art of negotiation.

Hat tip Insta-Glenn.

The sign o' the times

From ABC we learn of possible Iranian complicity in Iragi deployed IEDs.

And today Cheney and Madame Secretary Rice told Iran what's what and who's who.

We'll see if the the kid gets it.

This Charming Man

From a 1982 promotional video for The Smith's "This Charming Man". Not to be confused with this charming man, Paul Gascoigne. "Gazza" was pretty much a legendary British baller, known for being a tough guy that would get into brawls on the field, similar to ice hockey enforcers.

Miracleworkers on ABC

So ABC is launching a new show called Miracleworkers, and I'm wondering if we're seeing a new trend in America where media is waking up to the fact that socialist systems don't have a monopoly on compassion.

Could it be that in a country with as much disparity between "haves" and "have-nots" there exists within ordinary (and extraordinary) people a need to do good? That once people reach their professional zenith they want to reach for something higher? Something deeper? I love this country, and part of the reason is that "stupid" and "old" media companies like ABC can entertain me in a way that reaches so far into my soul that I want to cry. I knew I came to these shores for a reason. To become an American.

From the land of Howard Dean (no, not the DNC, the actual physical locale of VT)

Check out this article from the NY Times, courtesy of NRO's the corner (yeah I know, the friggin' Times).

Are they really losing all their younguns, a la Europe? I've always heard VT is gorgeous. Could it be true that it sucks? Could it possibly be worse than West-Houston (or Katy, as the peeps call it)?

I'm asking Porkchop and T-bone. Porkchop knows a lot of shit, and T-bone is a bone-a-fide Houstonian.

On another note, if I pretend to dislike the regular media so much, why do I buy the Statesman on weekends (goes great with my eggs), and why do I link to Times articles to make a subliminal point about the alleged failure of Dean's homestate? More importantly, am I ever going to get laid?

Permalink

Viewpoint on Iraqi civil war

Bill Roggio's The Fourth Rail looks at the possibility of Shiite v. Sunni violence might be fomented by Al-qaida.

An idea of what we're fighting:

Reuters reports an attack on a town outside of Baghdad called Al-Nahrawan, where 19 Shiites were killed, including “a six-year-old girl killed with a single bullet to her forehead.”

Savages.

Abortion ban in South Dakota

Any thoughts on this? I don't know how I feel about that one. I'm listening to a Republican talk about when exceptions should be made, and he mentions a "deeply religious girl, saving herself from marriage".

I'm not a huge fan of late-term and partial birth abortions, but I think South Dakota lawmakers went a little too far on this one.

I guess this is being played up as a huge Supreme Court battle.

Newshour with Jim Lehrer

So I'm sitting here watching the newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, and David Brooks and another guy is discussing the recent negative polls on Bush. David Brooks is a pretty conservative guy, and his counterpart always has a fairly liberal slant. Do news-magazines think we don't hear enough about how much Bush is hated? "Hear ye Hear ye! America hates push, read all about it!" And some people wonder why the liberal radio station Air America can't make it in the market space...

The Sheikh of slaughter

Apparently it is the nickname of Zarqawi, and from Bill Roggio we learn that he might have been captured in a raid in the Jazeera region.

How good would that be?!!

Cruncy Con Blog

From The National Review comes the new blog Crunchy Con Blog, describing itself as "the blog for birkenstocked Burkeans and those who love them". I imagine myself as something of a crunchy conservative at times: I want taxes lowered, listen to some Dead, check out some concerts, and have smoked some pot now and then.

Ahh, it made me happy just writing those things.

Frequency of blogging

I think I'm blogging tons more since I got my new notebook. I'm loving it, this thing is so sweet, I woke up early thinking about it and had to come downstairs to see if it was alright. I highly recommend blowing the tax refund on a notebook.

Other Music

Check out this video about some music clerks at "Other Music", a fictional record store.

One of the guys from the Sonic commercials make a "cameo".

Wafa Sultan on Al Jazeera

I got chills when I watched this clip from Al Jazeera.

More on this at Dhimmiwatch.

Granted this was taped back in '05, but it still seems like there's a thawing.

Via Instapundit.